


The Ballot

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was surpassingly difficult to know what one should wear to cast a ballot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ballot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misspamela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misspamela/gifts).



It was surpassingly difficult to know what one should wear to cast a ballot. The location of the polling place offered few useful clues – the Dowager Countess had entered the Village Hall on numerous occasions (while one's roses might not win the village prize every year, one's presence was still required at such events), yet political business had never required her attention (lest one considered the act of presiding over the Women's Guild annual fete a political act, and one could be excused for doing so, indeed). The frost that morning suggested heavy brocade, perhaps her fox collar, but one had to take pains not to look as though in mourning when so many had cause to take the black. What jewelry did one wear? Which hat was most appropriate? The young would no doubt turn out to vote in a scandalous mix of jodhpurs and shirt-waists – what, exactly, was the touch of breeding a Dowager Countess might bring?

In the end she chose blue – somber, dutiful, a touch of velvet at her waist – and a hat rather larger than those her granddaughters favored of late. Economy was well and good, but one couldn't abandon taste for the dictates of the rabble entirely. Women would, she supposed, go bare-headed before much longer, the crowns of their heads as naked as the day they were born, inviting pestilence and headaches and every sort of cold. She would be _buried_ in her Tudor Beret at the very least.

It was somewhat trying to find that the line at the Hall was short, and the atmosphere calm. One had, perhaps, hoped for a touch of the dramatic – the orderly fashion in which everything proceeded would lead one to believe that the female vote was an ordinary thing.

"Name, milady?" asked Mr. Hopwell, postmaster of the village, pen poised above a ledger of names.

One could hardly be faulted for swelling with righteous indignation. "John Francis Hopwell, I have known you since you were a child in arms! What is the meaning of such a question?"

Hopwell flushed. "It's procedure, milady. I have to check you in against the voter rolls."

The Countess said nothing, preferring the effect of a withering silence.

"Yes, milady, quite right milady," Mr. Hopwell mumbled, placing a check mark beside a line of script that one hoped was properly respectful of rank and ancestry.

Inside the voting booth, the Countess examined the writing instrument she'd been handed, the paper on which she was to express her opinion – as though one were capable of holding an opinion which one might encapsulate with a mark beside a man's name! – and read the small print carefully. One had to be careful. With experiments in suffrage afoot, there were surely those who would slip complete revolution into the mix, arrange for the nation to abandon the monarchy _and_ the Empire if they could. One was absolutely excused for the act of sniffing the paper and discovering it to be of poor quality, too shabby for everyday use; quite natural, with things as they were. It was, none the less, bracing, she supposed, to sweep out of the booth and toward Hopwell's desk, to slip her folded ballot into the metal box.

"Thank you, milady," said Hopwell.

The Countess sniffed and pointed at the padlock. "I do hope Forbes supplied that thing," she said. "One can never trust locksmiths from outside the Riding."

"London, milady."

"Hmmm." She tugged at her glove, eyed the butcher as he entered, hat in hand. "Change in everything, it seems." And one couldn't quite say why one was smiling as if one had made a witty observation, as if the day warranted some expression of jubilation, but smile one did.


End file.
